Besides training retail salespeople, Brady Marketing spends at least eight hours prior to actual demonstrations explaining products and sales approaches to demonstrators. Unlike many retailers and manufacturers that hire demonstrators practically off the street, Brady Marketing screens all prospects by telephone before interviewing them. Of those interviewed, about 50% are accepted. "We're not interested in someone with heavy demo experience," says Brady. The company values communication skills, patience, and creativity.
Like most employees, demonstrators benefit from proper training and recognition. "We pay demonstrators for coming to lunch or talking on the phone," says Wagner. With weekly computer printouts that report the dollar and unit sales for each demonstrator, Brady Marketing can easily single out top performers for special recognition. Such attention has paid off in an uncommonly loyal and professional network of reps. In fact, Brady plans to expand its demonstrator servies. Like an employment agency, the company intends to contract out demonstrators to manufacturers other than those Brady Marketing represents.
Besides in-store marketing services -- customized merchandising programs, sales training, and demonstrations -- Brady generates interest among consumers outside the retail stores. At a three-day consumer cookware show held in Scottsdale, Ariz., Brady Marketing and Diamond's, a Phoenix-based retailer, rented 200 square feet of booth space in which to demonstrate Simac Appliance Corp.'s ice cream and pasta makers to about 6,000 visitors. To squeeze the most out of shows and promotions, Brady frequently runs prize drawings. Names on the drawing registration cards are later transferred to Brady's mailing list, as well as to the lists of the participating manufacturer and retailer.
Brady's salespeople also encourage small retail accounts, which are reluctant to advertise, to spend cooperative ad dollars provided by manufacturers. And to boost their confidence, Wagner has arranged with the ad departments at the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times to have sample ads prepared at no charge. Once the mock ads convince a store to advertise, notes Wagner, the paid advertising more than compensates for the initial paste-up time.
In 1981, Frank Brady decided to expand his business by leasing a 2,000-square-foot warehouse. "It was a way to protect our customer base of small retail accounts," he says. Because specialtystore owners don't have the confidence to purchase the amount of inventory they should, the warehouse allows the specialty stores -- which represent about 30% of Brady's business -- to order in small quantities and receive overnight shipment on orders.
Seeing yet another opportunity, Brady also formed a new division, Culinary Parts Unlimited. CPU provides retailers with replacement parts for appliances -- including glass carafes, filter paper, and pasta disks -- items that retailers prefer not to stock. Demonstrators and retail salespeople simply hand customers brochures that list CPU's toll-free telephone number. Instead of calling a manufacturer's service center and waiting six weeks for delivery, a customer can expect shipment from CPU within 48 hours.
Few manufacturers have the benefit of working with rep firms that, on their own initiative, go to such extremes as Brady to provide marketing services. Most manufacturers, in fact, complain that their reps don't give their products the attention they deserve. But the problem may not rest entirely on the rep. "Ninety-nine percent of the manufacturers never tell the rep what's expected," explains Thomas R. Lawrence, an investment banker in Memphis and formerly a consultant to manufacturers developing rep networks. "When the manufacturer signs on a rep, he has to articulate the programs he wants done."
Brady has chosen to deal with the kind of manufacturers -- General Housewares, Krups, and Simac, for example -- that work closely with their rep organizations and are willing to incorporate ideas and suggestions from the field. For instance, it was largely upon Brady's insistence that Krups's management decided to change the color of its automatic drip coffee maker from "European" orange to white. That decision, claims Brady, "increased business on the item tenfold."
Since 1980, Brady has purposely winnowed down the number of manufacturers he represents from 20 to 12 in order to allow him to provide the marketing and merchandising it takes to push products through stores successfully. Although he intends to keep that number at the current level or lower, he does plan to diversify. "We're looking for other high-quality products that require an explanation," says Brady. That could be exercise equipment, hi-tech furniture, or ski clothing. "We're not selling cookware," he emphasizes, "we're selling quality and fashion." As a reflection of his own aggressiveness, however, he defines more narrowly future manufacturers he intends to represent: "We're interested in companies that aren't satisfied with 10% or 15% growth a year . . . companies that have the financial resources, the desire, and the sense of urgency to move at a faster clip."
